WK 2-3 4-6 7 8 9 10 M: 5.7 4.6 4.6/1.3 4.3/1.3* 4/1.2 4.6/1.2 T: 6.7 5.8 6.1/1.8 6.5/2.0 5.7/1.4 6/1.8 W: 6.2 5.7 5.0/1.5 4.7/1.3* 4.6/1.4 5.2/1.4 Th: 4.9 5.0 4.4/1.6 4.7/1.7 4.6/1.6 4.8/1.6 F: 5.6 5.5 5.1/1.2 4.6/1.2 4.7/1.2 5.1/1.5 AVE: 5.8 5.3 5.3/1.5 5.0/1.5 4.7/1.4 5.0/1.5
As suggested by his Monday numbers this week, Week 10 was the first week in a long time that Leno showed a week to week increase in his numbers. He was up about 15% on Monday, and about 6% for the week. Given the significant slide last week's numbers took, which if continued (or even just uncorrected) would have taken him pretty much into the abyss, this is very good news for Leno, and I think this is probably the first week of relatively good news he has had since week 1. A couple of things are now clear after 10 weeks of the Jay Leno Show: Thing 1: There have been 4 phases to his ratings (Phase 1. Premier Week: 11.7M, 3.4 rating in the demo; Phase 2. Week 2-3: 5.8M; Phase 3. Week 4-7: 5.3M, 1.5; Phase 4. Week 8-10: 5M, 1.5). This is the good news referred to above - the week 9 numbers appear to be something of a fluke, and perhaps he has stabilized at the 5.0M, 1.5 demo rating level. This is crucial for him, since this is the minimum floor NBC established at which the show can be profitable (I have read some skeptics who think this was an artificially low floor, and that NBC was really hoping to be able to use it to brag about how great a 5.5, 1.7 average would be, but that is another matter). Leno can now argue that, through the first sweeps period, his show is meeting minimum expectations of profitability. The affiliates may or may not swallow this, but at least NBC can argue that this is what they promised. Plus, Leno is now poised to show he can improve on these numbers over the first extended re-run period from Thanksgiving till whenever they start running new shows in January. My metric of success for him will be can he climb back to his Phase 2 numbers in the 5.8M range (which I think would be a rating of around 1.7). Thing 2: Leno is getting his ass saved by Tuesday night, which gets about 20% higher ratings than his weekly average, and is almost always his best night (7 of the 9 weeks since premier week). I assume that is pretty much due to the weight loss reality show, which seems to be very popular. Thing 3: Leno's worst nights are Monday and Friday. He doesn't do very well in terms of total viewers on Thursday, but he gets a higher rating in the demo, which I guess suggests that The Office/30 Rock do pretty well in the demo. To me these things still suggest that NBC should consider reducing the Jay Leno Show's footprint to Tuesday-Thursday, and use Monday and Friday to start developing some adult/prestige dramas, perhaps starting out be re-purposing some of their cable shows. The could also put at least L&O SVU back at 10:00 (I think it would do well on Monday) and maybe put L&O mother ship on Friday, (though it seems to be holding its own at 8:00). This would allow them to try out different shows at some of the 9:00 and 8:00 hours. Cutting Leno down to 3 nights would also have one other obvious benefit - it would give Leno and his writers time to improve the quality of their output. Currently Leno and staff have what really is an impossible work load. The rationale for this show (and it is emphasized in the marketing) is that Leno delivers the comedy at 10:00. The original idea was, compared to The Tonight Show, Leno would have less interviews and music and more comedy segments. I don't know about the early decades of television, but I can't think of any writing staff over the last 40 years that has been given this kind of absurd assignment. Even if one likes Leno's type of comedy (I do not), you can not reasonably expect him to churn out 30 minutes of high quality, original comedy 5 nights a week (and of course, they don't). Give them two extra dark days per week to work on comedy segments for the other three, and you might reasonably expect the quality to improve. Also, if he does not want to rely on interviews and music as filler, he needs some kind of paradigm-based, fill in the blanks comedy schema that is easier to work with. Dave's Top Ten has lasted this long because (I assume) it is such a help to the writers. I imagine writing the Top Ten is basically like extending the writing for monologue jokes, except they only need one premise and 10 punchlines. Leno needs something like that, which takes up a segment on every show and is pretty easy to write. I don't know what the contract implications are of cutting the show back to 3/week. I guess if NBC still has to pay Leno the same amount for 3 shows that they currently pay him for 5, it would undercut the financial reasons for the move. But I assume at some point NBC has an option to re-structure the deal, and if 3 shows a week would improve the quality, it might be in their best interest to start doing that in January or February and try to put some of the shine back on the Leno brand. I noticed something else in the ratings this week, which may have been true in other weeks but I have not been paying attention. Both Dateline on NBC at 9:00 on Friday, and 20 20 on ABC at 10:00 did significantly better than Leno (about 50% better). This can not be good news, since newsmagazines have exactly the same logic behind them as the Leno Show - cheap to produce, DVR-proof. If NBC can get better ratings with a newsmagazine then they can with Leno, why don't they? -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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